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MAY 31, 2008 -- The assembly of the Indigenous Front of Binational
Organisations in the Mixteca region of Oaxaca, one of the poorest
areas in Mexico. A large percentage of the indigenous population
of Oaxaca and other states has left to work in northern Mexico and in
the United States. The FIOB is a political organisation of indigenous communities and migrants, with chapters in Mexico and the US. It advocates for the rights of migrants, and for the right not to migrate -- for
economic development which would enable people to stay home.

Since its landmark publication in 1980, A People’s History of the United States has had six new editions, sold more than 1.7 million copies and been turned into
an acclaimed play. More than a successful book, A People’s History
triggered a revolution in the way history is told, displacing the
official versions with their emphasis on great men in high places to
chronicle events as they were lived, from the bottom up.

June 21, 2008 -- The National Front (BN) government led by PM Abdullah Badawi has been shaky since the March general election that returned a much stronger parliamentary opposition — now largely united in a new People’s Front (Pakatan Rakyat).

However, the BN’s recent decision to lift petrol prices by 41% (and
diesel by 63%) has galvanised a new round of mass protests. Thousands
took to the streets in Kuala Lumpur after prayers at the mosque on June
13 demanding that prices be lowered and a much larger rally is being
planned for July 6.

Link’s Peter Boyle spoke on June 19 with S.Arutchelvan,
the secretary-general of the Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM), about
the recent developments. After a 10-year battle for registration as a
legal party, the PSM has just been promised recognition by the
embattled government. This follows the PSM winning two seats in the
March elections.

June 13, 2008 -- LatinRadical-- Coral Wynter
is back after coordinating the distinctive presence of the Australian Venezuela Solidarity Network's ``May Day'' brigade to Venezuela that included, appropriately, a large
contingent of Australian trade unionists. The previous Australian government of John Howard had the Australian embassy in Venezuela closed down when a Washington-inspired coup against President Hugo Chavez failed, but hopefully that
will change, if Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown (with the Australian brigadistas) returns after his own visit with the news that
President Hugo Chavez is not a ``dictator'', but a popularly elected
leader who has increased his electoral popularity regularly at each
electoral contest.

By Farooq Tariq
Thousands of lawyers, political, trade unions and social movement
activists have made their way to Islamabad. They are participating in
the Long March called by the lawyers' movement. This is to push the
Pakistan Peoples Party government to restore the top judges without any
conditions.

June 11 report:
The Long March started from Karachi on June 9 and arrived in Sukhar at
early hours of June 10. Here they were joined by the participants from different groups from Baluchistan. They arrived at Multan on June 10
in the late hours, where the deposed chief justice Iftikhar Choudary had
arrived to welcome the rally. They left for
Lahore around 1pm.

On 29 May 2009, the delegates at the national convention of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), representing more than 3 million workers from every region of Canada and Quebec, voted overwhelmingly to demand that the government of Canada immediately end its participation in the illegal war in Afghanistan.

This CLC demand represents a significant consolidation of labour power. Several national unions, notably the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), had already adopted policies to oppose Canada's participation in the war in Afghanistan. However, some powerful unions whose members work in the rapidly expanding Canadian military and development industries could profit from continuing the war. The women and men of these unions made the difficult decision to stand in solidarity with the working people of Afghanistan rather than act on self-interest.

June 2, 2008 -- Fred Fuentes
in Caracas reports on important struggles being played out within
Venezuela's governing PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela). While
President Chavez' power base is with the grassroots organisations,
some of the entrenched bureaucrats and more conservative politicians
are fighting off challenges from delegates representing these organisations. PSUV is currently going through a
kind of pre-selection process, and the more conservative elements are
using all kinds of dirty tricks to hang on to their influence within
the party. Aired on LeftCast.

Mannenberg

Abdullah
Ibrahim (Dollar Brand) is seen here visiting Mandela's cell on Robben Island, and wandering in and
around Cape Town -- including the famed District Six and Mannenberg -- to the soundtrack of his now classic South African jazz tune Mannenberg (Is Where It's Happening).

Born in Durban and the author of a forthcoming book on Wentworth in Durban, Peter
Mckenzie was a co-founder of the photo collective Afrapix agency under
the auspices of the South African Council of Churches and the chief
photographer for Drum magazine until the late 1980s before going
freelance. He was also the co-ordinator and facilitator of the
photojournalism department at the Institute for the Advancement of
Journalism from 1996 to 1999. Mckenzie has published and exhibited both in South Africa and internationally, and is recognised as one of South Africa's
greatest photographers.

Below, McKenzie provides a commentary on aesthetics and representation strategies for
popular movements committed to social justice.

Pre-post: A trajectory in South African photography

By Peter Mckenzie, Sean O’ Toole and Jo Ractliffe

Sean: Very often in discussions of contemporary South African photography, and I would say I’m a guilty culprit here too, commentators have tended to speak of the 1990s signalling a break in continuity. After decades of socially committed photography, Drum magazine in the 1950s and early 1960s, and more pointedly the socially committed vision of the Afrapix collective in the 1980s, it seems that after Mandela’s release and the transition to a non-racial democracy photography splintered. At least so goes the master narrative. Or will history, which is good at flattening things, simply define the 1990s as the identity decade?

May 26, 2008 -- The low-income black township here in Durban which suffered more than
any other during apartheid, Cato Manor, was the scene of a test
performed on a Mozambican last Wednesday morning (May 21). At 6:45am, in the warmth of a rising subtropical winter sun, two
unemployed men strolling on Belair Road approached the middle-aged
immigrant. They accosted him and demanded, in the local indigenous
language isiZulu, that he say the word meaning ``elbow'' (this they
referred to with their hand). The man answered ``idolo'', which unfortunately means ``knee''. The correct
answer is ``indololwane''. His punishment: being beaten up severely, and
then told to ``go home''.

Cuban revolutionary Celia Hart addresses the ``A World in Revolt'' conference, Toronto, Canada, May 22-25, 2008. She discusses the reformist and revolutionary trends in Latin American politics, the right-wing ``autonomy'' moves in Bolivia and Venezuela, and the challenges that face the revolutions in Bolivia and Venezuela. She concludes by discussing the significance of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution for Latin America.

The conference was sponsored by Socialist Action-Canada, Socialist Action-United States and the Socialist Unity League (LUS) of Mexico.

May 24, 2008 -- Jorge Schafik Handal Vega --son of the legendary FMLN founder ``Comandante Simon''' Jorge
Schafik Handal -- joined the militant left in El Salvador in 1968 as a
student. He was a combatant commander throughout the people’s war in
the 1970s and 1980s and, following the 1991 peace accords, was integral
to the successful transition of the FMLN’s combatant structures into
the political and civil institutions of El Salvador. He is currently a
deputy for the FMLN in the Central American Parliament.

Handal Vega is toured Australia in May 2008 to build solidarity with the
FMLN’s 2009 election campaign, a message that was enthusiastically
received. All recent opinion polls in El Salvador
indicate that the FMLN will win both the mayoral and presidential
elections next year, wresting the last Central American country to be
governed by the extreme right wing out of its control. Desperate to
prevent this, the US-backed ruling Arena party has launched a massive
campaign of bribery and intimidation, which is accompanied by a growing
number of brutal attacks on, and murders of, FMLN leaders and
activists.

The FMLN is expecting Arena to also use fraud to try to win the
elections, and is urging Australian activists to travel to El Salvador
in December-January to act as international observers of the election.

Mountain View, California, May 20, 2008 -- Silicon Valley janitors, mostly immigrants from Mexico and Central America, walked out of Cisco Systems and Yahoo buildings in the first day of a Bay Area-wide strike intended to force building service contractors to sign a new agreement with their union, Service
Employees Local 1877.

May 13, 2008 (Latin Radical) -- Estanislau Da Silva
was a prime minister of Timor Leste (East Timor) when Fretilin was the
party in government. Before that, he was the minister for agriculture. He was in Australia this week to attend the
launching of a book by a Timorese man, Naldo Rei, who grew up in Indonesian-occupied Timor Leste, as a committed supporter of the Fretilin-led resistance movement.

A clip from the BBC's Around the World in 80 Gardens (2008) introduces the urban organic food gardening revolution in Havana, Cuba. Click HERE for a three-part talk by Cuban permaculturist Roberto Perez that delves deeper into Cuba's green revolution, and an interview with the makers of The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, the film in which Perez featured.

So there’s nothing to stop us from emulating the Cuban farming revolution.

The Residents Action Movement (or RAM) is a left-wing
local government electoral ticket in the Auckland Regional Council of New Zealand's largest city. RAM is in the process of becoming a national-level political party to
contest the 2008 elections. RAM can be characterised as as broad left
coalition, stretching from social liberals, community activists and
former National Party members to social democrats, democratic
socialists and left-wing radicals. Its chairperson is currently Grant Morgan, who is also a leading member of Socialist Worker (Aotearoa).

This interview with Grant Morgan, Daphne Lawless (a RAM candidate in last year's Auckland Regional Council election and is a current member of the RAM executive) and Oliver Woods, RAM co-organiser, was recorded by telephone on May 1, 2008, and broadcast by LeftCast.